Dude, where's my hard drive??

[Mr_Bob_Loblaw]

Apologize if this is the dumbest question ever. I have a Pavilion desktop with (supposedly) a 1.0 TB hard drive. However, I'm constantly getting "no storage space remaining" errors (despite the fact I save barely anything on this computer), so I was shopping/researching new hard drives. Along the way I kept doing the math on my storage, and I swear I only have 100 GB of storage, not 1000 GB. Where's my other 900 (or so) GB?

Anyhow I'm trying to make space for now until I can get a new hard drive, so I go into Optimize Drives and this is what I see:

Uh...where's my hard drive? My SATA/non-SSD hard drive? For further reference, here's what it looks like in File Explorer/This PC:

You can see where I'm getting the 100 GB of space from; just adding C, D, and E together (and rounding, because I think storage is usually approximate).

Anyhow, like I said earlier, this may be the dumbest question ever asked (I'm only very minimally computer literate)...but shouldn't I have another hard drive? With like a terabyte of space on it? I'm so incredibly confused right now. From my research it looks like maybe this model has an SSD drive for faster boot-up, but then a SATA drive for, like, stuff. If that's right, is it possible that I somehow have just been using the SSD for boot-up AND storage??

Thanks for any help!!

PS At some point (1-2 years ago), the computer crashed something awful, and I had to reinstall the OS using like a thumb drive and my kid's computer. I've always said it's a minor miracle I got it to work again. But maybe I only partially got it working? Maybe in doing that, I deleted my hard drive or something???

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

it is an interesting problem to say the least.

If your PC came with a 1 TB hard drive, something has happened to it.

The reason the optimization won't work is because your PC's drive does not have enough free space on it for the program to work.

The only thing I can think of is that you seem to have a problem similar to this one, where the drive has become damaged and you cannot access all of the space it came with.

Solved: Re: Help please. - HP Support Community - 8138422

Run the hard drive diagnostics test in the BIOS (F2) and see what it reports.

Don't clean the disk unless you have your files backed up, and you are prepared to reinstall W10, because that will erase everything on the drive.

[Mr_Bob_Loblaw]

Thank you so much for your response. I will try to run the BIOS diagnostic test.

When you say "the reason the optimization won't work is because your PC's drive does not have enough free space on it for the program to work"...is it also a problem that it is only showing me SSD drives? Should I also have the option of optimizing my SATA drive, if it exists? Or is that program only available for SSD drives?

The PC definitely came with 1TB of storage; I'm staring at the receipt. I worry that it was either corrupted in the crash, or I did something when I had to reformat/reinstall everything from scratch.

Thank you again, I will see what BIOS diagnostic says.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

What is the full model number or product number of your PC?

Use this guide to find that information.  Please do not post the serial number.

HP Desktop PCs - How Do I Find My Model Number or Product Number? | HP® Customer Support

Did it come with two drives (a SSD for the operating system, and a 1 TB hard drive for storage)?

I want to see what the specs are.

[Mr_Bob_Loblaw]

Ok I will post the results of the BIOS check and then respond to your next quetsions. I only did a Quick Check; hopefully that is acceptable? First I went to "Select drives to check" or whatever and got this screen:

So that's the 1TB hard drive I can't find in Windows. Anyhow I ran the quick check on that drive (#1), and got this screen:

So, shockingly, the BIOS thinks the drive is ok.

Now I will check for the other info you requested.

[Mr_Bob_Loblaw]

Product Name: HP Pav 590-p0081c DT PC US

Model #: 590-p0081c

Product #: 3Lc16AA#ABA

I honestly didn't remember whether it came with two drives, but after researching it a little, yes it seems like it came with an SSD for the OS and a 1 TB hard drive for storage? But I'm not 100% certain of that. (Again I'm not a computer expert. Not even close. Figuring out some of this as I go.)

[Mr_Bob_Loblaw]

Ok this seems relevant. I was researching and right-clicked This PC/Manage, then went to Disk Management, and it shows this:

So...there's a 837 GB chunk of the hard drive that is Unallocated, apparently? No clue what that means or how to fix it, but that doesn't seem ideal.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

Yes that is your problem.

Somehow when you reinstalled Windows, you didn't do it right.

I usually delete all partitions, and make just one large partition of unallocated space.

See if the info at the link below is of help to you to make the 837 GB of space usable.

Know How To Format an Unallocated SSD Without Facing Any Trouble? (softwarepro.org)

The good news is...you don't need a new hard drive.

[Mr_Bob_Loblaw]

Lol how wild. This is why people like me shouldn't try rescuing computers. (I was about to order a new one but figured I would try one last shot at saving it. I guess I was only partially successful.)

Thank you so much, I will try to follow those directions and rescue the missing space later tonight.

Again, I appreciate your help so much!!!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance.

Another thing you can do is get a 32 GB USB flash drive and use the HP cloud recovery tool to factory reset your PC's drive system to its 'out of the box' condition.

Here is an info link for how to use that utility...Back up any files you need to save before resetting the PC.

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10, 7) | HP® Customer Support